


The Rival

by Maisie_top_trash



Series: Eating Disorder AUs [6]
Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Anorexia, Anxiety, Control Issues, Depression, Eating Disorder, Inpatient, Jealousy, M/M, Overexercise, Recovery, Rivalry, Self Harm, mental health, psychiatric hospital
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-17 05:50:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21049361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maisie_top_trash/pseuds/Maisie_top_trash
Summary: The Oaktree SeriesJosh first arrived on Ward 3 when he was 12 years old. For years he’d held the crown as sickest boy of them all, but now with only a handful of weeks before he timed out of the adolescent service, Tyler had arrived and he was threatening to ruin it all.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Can be read as a follow up to Liar Liar (Also in my ED AUs series) as they’re in the same universe, but can also be read as a stand alone. 
> 
> Triggers below, skip to avoid potential spoilers:  
.  
.  
.  
.  
Restricted eating  
Calories/numbers  
Self harm  
Exercise  
Grief and cancer
> 
> Tell me if I missed anything <3

“...and then we’ll reconvene next week to discuss whether our application for a transfer to the high security ward has been successful.”  
“If it’s not successful, what will than mean for Joshie?” Mom whispered anxiously.  
“Well I’m very confident that the Becket unit will welcome him back, but if not then we’ll continue his care here at Oaktree, supplying all the support we can. Again we’ll have to get the whole team involved in creating that care plan, but most likely it will continue to involve daily weigh ins, obs and bloods, plus group and solo therapies if he’s well enough to attend, and supervision from a member of staff during his periods of distress.”

“And the tube?” Dad asked a question that time.  
“The tube will stay in and he’ll continue to receive feeds through it until he’s able to wean onto oral consumption in sufficient quantities to continue his weight gain, but I believe that to be quite far off in the distance.” Dr West replied. “You’re not currently engaging in your feeding sessions focused on encouraging you to eat, are you Josh?”  
“He gets so overwhelmed by it, don’t you Joshie?” His mom answered on his behalf with a baby voice that Josh didn’t react to.

“I understand it can be difficult on multiple counts to initiate eating after so long relying solely on the feeding tube. It can be difficult psychologically and physically, and I know you struggle with the sensory elements of putting food in your mouth Josh, but our feeding therapists want to work alongside you to overcome that aversion, even if your eating disorder demand you spit it out immediately afterwards. That needs to be our focus this week, putting food in your mouth and chewing it, okay? Not swallowing, only holding it in your mouth, just so we can begin to overcome the sensory discomfort.” Dr West was a kind man, and spoke warmly, but Josh knew he wouldn’t even try to attempt the task.

“If he carries on refusing, what can you do?” Dad asked the head psychologist.  
“Good question, it’s a hard line to walk,” he admitted. “Now because he’s under a psych hold, legally we have the right to enforce treatment on him, but as a mental health professional I’m more interested in what’s going to help him, rather than using all my power as harshly as I’m allowed. We have had to put a psych hold on him, because otherwise he wouldn’t have a tube and he would starve to death, or he could walk out of the unit and harm himself, or he could choose not to take his medication and decline further in his mental state, but the tube and the medication and the closed doors are the only treatments I am going to insist upon - oh and of course restraint when he is actively self harming.”  
“Right,”

“I could have him frogmarched into therapy, but what good would that do? He’s unlikely to want to engage after we’ve treated him like that, and I’ve got no magic truth serum at my dispensary that I can give him to make him talk. Instead we need to gain some trust back, don’t we Josh? Build up a good relationship - and that takes time. Right now I’m not forcing Josh to attend his sessions, and so he’s often choosing not to go, but in the future I’m optimistic that he will see that I want the best for him and so will trust me when I say that therapy will benefit him. He’s doing really well with communicating with me, we just need to build up the confidence to trust his therapist in the same way.”

Josh avoided eye contact.

“Considering he’s been inpatient for almost all of his teenage years, do you think we’re reaching a point where it’s no longer effective?” Dad asked something that terrified Josh frequently - the idea that he was never going to feel better than this.

“No longer effective? Can I ask what you mean by that Mr Dun?” Dr West inquired.  
“I guess what I’m getting at is that I worry therapy isn’t working. If this treatment is supposed to help him move beyond his eating issues, why isn’t he recovered?”  
“Well mental health is never as simple as the textbooks suggest unfortunately, it’s not as easy as administer x and y will happen, and I can absolutely understand both your frustration and heartbreak at the seemingly chronic nature of your son’s condition, but here at Oaktree we don’t believe in any eating disorder being treatment resistant - we just simply haven’t found the right therapist doing the right type of therapy at the right time for Josh yet, but I have faith that we will.”

“We’re not giving up though, are we Bill? We know Josh has enough fight left in him to beat this once and for all,” Mom reached across to hold her husband’s hand, and he squeezed reassuringly.  
“Of course he does.” Dad nodded.

“Do we have anymore questions? Either about Josh’s treatment or our application to a higher security ward? Or even something beyond?”  
“No I don’t think so, thanks so much Doc, we always appreciate you taking such good care of our Joshie.”  
“It’s my pleasure,” Dr West closed up his file and smiled. “How about you Josh? Got a question?” He asked, and Josh shook his head ever so slightly.

“Right, I shall give the three of you a moment of privacy to say your goodbyes, then once you’re ready, I’ll escort you back downstairs, and Josh you’ll be allowed back to your room. Lemme just pop outside for you,”  
“Thanks,” Dad said appreciatively as the man slipped out of the door and left the Duns alone in his office.

“You’re very quiet today Joshie, are things getting a bit much?” Mom played with his greasy hair fondly, with a worried look on her face.  
“Didn’t sleep last night,” Josh said his first words since the meeting began.  
“At all?” She clarified, and he shook his head no. “Oh baby, Mommy’s sorry, that’s so tough,”

“How’d you feel about Dr West applying for a transfer over to Becket High Security again?” Dad asked.  
“Whatever,” he shrugged passively.  
“You’re not upset?”  
“They’ll just do what they always do and send me for a 6 week stabilising admission, then discharge me back to Oaktree - it’s happened like half a dozen times before,”  
“Do you not want to stay here though? Where your buddy is?”  
“Ty? He’s better off without me. I’m a bad influence.”  
“Don’t say that Joshie, Tyler’s lucky to have a friend like you who gets what he’s going through,”  
“When I met him he was a healthy weight - now he’s skeletal and inpatient.”  
“You don’t know that’s because of you though Josh, after all you met in the outpatient clinic, so he already had an eating disorder. You can’t blame yourself.” Dad was in agreement with Mom.  
“And they say I’m the deluded one.” Josh sighed.

“Your sisters say hi,” Mom didn’t like talking about delusions because she knew she couldn’t fix it, so moved on. “Ashley took your picture into school on Monday because they're doing portraits in art class and she chose to paint you.”  
“Me?”  
“Yeah, she needs bold photos which make a statement so she just finished one of Jordan when he was in the hospital and first lost his hair, and now for her second once she’s chosen you with your NG tube.” She explained and it made more sense - Ashley wasn’t honouring him, she was utilising his pain for her own gain. That agreed with his understanding of their relationship more. “She says it’s going really well so far but is probably gonna take another couple of weeks to finish.”  
“No rush, I’m gonna be locked in here for a couple more years,”  
“You’ll be home sooner than that champ, you’ve just gotta work on engaging more, yeah?” Dad encouraged him and he nodded dutifully, everybody knowing it was a blatant lie.

“Thanks for coming to see me.”  
“Of course son, absolutely, our pleasure,”  
“Sorry we’ve been so busy recently, the kids have had all kinds of clubs and sleepovers and science fairs and you name it - they’ve kept us on our toes, but we can try and find time to visit you again before the transfer to Becket if you’d like? How does that sound?”  
“Can we leave it a week? And uh, and then see?” Josh wished he could connect to his loving parents more, but truthfully couldn’t wait for their visits to be over, and after 6 years of hospitalisation, they had learnt that constant visits didn’t always help any of them, so had agreed to step back sometimes.

“Okay, no visit this week, but you’ve gotta text Mommy at least once every other day, okay Joshie? Just so I can keep up to date with how things are going? No isolating yourself, promise?”  
“Okay,” Josh was willing to meet her halfway.

“Right, we’ll head home then, try and beat the rush hour traffic. Keep up the good work kiddo,” Dad stood up and patted Josh’s shoulder, and he wanted to ask what good work, considering the fact he was being sent to a high security ward because he was having so many uncontrollable episodes of self harm, but instead he just nodded.

“Mommy loves you, and if you need anything, anything, then you let me know, okay lovebug?” Mom cupped Josh’s face then kissed him on the forehead, avoiding the large bloody lump which had formed after an episode of head banging against the windowsill. “I love you so much, my little prince.”  
“Love you too,” he resisted the urge to sigh and just let the woman do what she needed to do.  
“Keep talking to people, yeah?”  
“Yep,”

“Okay, we’ll go,” she released him and held his dad’s hand instead, but still staring at him sadly for a moment before opening the door.

“Ready to be escorted downstairs?” Dr West smiled at the parents.  
“Yes thanks,”  
“Alrighty, Josh, you okay to walk back to your ward by yourself? Or should I ring for a nurse?”  
“I can do it,”  
“Wonderful,”  
“Thanks, uh, thanks again for coming,” he looked at the floor whilst addressing his parents.  
“Course son, always here if you need us. See you next week?”  
“Yep,” Josh nodded, “bye,”  
“Bye darling,” Mom blew him a kiss and he just span on the balls of his feet and started walking back down the corridor towards ward 3.

Oaktree was a huge complex, considerably bigger than any of the other eating disorder units he had been admitted to. They had an outpatients centre, and a day clinic, and 4 different wards. 2 were adult and 2 were adolescent, of which 2 were male and 2 were female. Josh’s ward, the male adolescent ward, was by far the smallest. It had a capacity of 6 patients, but currently only held 5, and one of those individuals was none other than Tyler Joseph.

He liked Tyler, he really liked Tyler, but going from maybe half an hour of FaceTiming a day to all of a sudden being neighbours was a lot, and throwing in how hysterical Tyler was most of the time just complicated the matter even further.

Josh was trying really hard not to be a dick, but after spending almost 4 and a half out of the last 6 years in hospital, he was used to the ebb and flow of inpatient life. Tyler was still settling, and it was a lot. He was a lot. It was all a lot.

“Hi Josh, how was your meeting?” The senior nurse on duty greeted him as he rang the bell to be allowed back onto ward 3.  
“S’fine, yeah,”  
“Good good. Initial there.” She handed him a pen so he could sign back in on the clipboard she was holding. “You’ve got about 20, 25 minutes before we need to hook you back up to your NG feed, so you can have some free time until then,”  
“Thanks Maggie,”  
“No worries, oh and also you got some post so I just popped it on your bed for you,”  
“You’re a star,” he flashed her a smile then made his way down the corridor towards his bedroom.

Maggie was awesome. Most of the long term staff were cool decent people who had figured out what helps and what doesn’t, and of course there were exceptions, and all the agency staff were actually pathetic, but Maggie had been the one to introduce him to Oaktree Ward 3 when he was 12 years old, so she was special. In a weird way she had more of a maternal influence on his life than his own mom.

“And?? What happened?? Are they sending you away??” Tyler didn’t give him a moment to breathe, just jumped down his throat as soon as he turned the corner. He’d been waiting outside his door, readying to pounce, and all Josh wanted was a nap.

“Josh?? Why are you ignoring me? Did something bad happen?? Is Dr West transferring you??”  
“Nothing bad happened, chill,” Josh opened his door and walked in, which Tyler took as an invitation to join him.

“Oh thank God, I thought they were gonna send you away, I thought you were gonna leave me here on my own,”  
“They’re applying for Becket,” he went over to his bed and picked up the ASOS package which had arrived, and started ripping the plastic open.  
“Applying for packet? What, what does that mean?” Tyler was still unfamiliar with all the lingo.  
“Becket, it’s the high security unit over in Knox County,”  
“No! No! Oh my god, no,”

Josh pulled his latest purchase out and unfolded it. He’d bought another hoodie, not that he needed one, he was up to something like 25 now, but impulse purchases were a bat habit of his. He was still waiting on about 3 or 4 more packages containing clothes he didn’t need, and would probably end up ordering another one before nightfall.

Meanwhile Tyler has burst into sobs, which Josh just couldn’t understand at all. Why was he so damn unstable?

“What? It’s not that bad, I’ve been there like 5 times,”  
“You c-can’t l-l-lea-eave m-me!” He wept, shaking hands covering his face.  
“Tyler stop crying, it’s fine, they have to do it every time I have more than 3 major incidents in a week, it’s just the protocol, it’s honestly not that serious, just chill, okay?”  
“Y-you’re l-l-lea-leav-ving m-me,”  
“Only for like 6 weeks. Becket only accept eating disorder patients as crisis stabilisation cases so they never take me for longer than that. The long term stays are just for PTSD and personality disorders and stuff, my admissions are short term de-escalations,”

Josh hated himself for thinking it, but Tyler was being kinda pathetic.

“Why you stressing? It’s gonna be fine,”  
“I’m g-g-gonna b-be o-on my o-own,”  
“You won’t, George, Antony and Kai will still be here, and Maggie will still be on duty, you like Maggie don’t you? Plus I swear your family come to visit you like every single day.” Josh reeled off all the people he could socialise with, whilst taking off his old hoodie and sliding on the new one. It tugged on his tube a little when it went over his head, so he fiddled with the plastic to get it comfortable again, then turned to Tyler.

“What do you think?”  
“The o-o-other b-boys h-ha-hate m-me,”  
“Not about that, about the hoodie? I thought it would be more sandy-ish camel-coloured ochre rather than leaning more towards warmer peachy, at least that’s what it looked like online, but I kinda don’t mind?” Josh asked.

One major disadvantage of being in an eating disorder unit was that there were no mirrors for Josh to check out his outfit. There were very tiny plastic rectangular mirrors glued to the walls in the bathrooms, which he could just about see his whole face in, but there were no full length ones to prevent bodychecking. Of course Josh had found a loophole within his first week of being a patient 6 years ago.

“Can you take a picture for me so I can see what it looks like?” He held his phone out to Tyler, who barely seemed to notice because he was still continuing to cry for some unknown reason. “Ty? No? Fine,”

With a sigh, Josh walked over to the wall and propped his phone up against it, rotated the camera and set up a 10s timer before taking several large steps back so his whole body was in shot. He waited for the countdown, then picked his phone back up and looked at the image.

“I like it, not bad for $22 hey?” Josh approved of the hoodie, but couldn’t resist zooming in on his thighs. He kept the photo for later inspection.

“Tyler, why are you upset?”  
“You p-pro-promised y-you’d l-look a-after m-me,”  
“I have looked after you, and it’s not like I chose to go to Becket; I’m sectioned, they get to decide, I don’t get a say,”  
“Y-y-you s-said you’d b-be h-here,”  
“I am here Ty, at least for the next couple of days, but you gotta start trying to be more independent anyway, I mean you realise I turn 18 in 2 months right? So I’ll be moved over to Ward 4 with the adults,”  
“N-n-no-no!! NO!”  
“My God you’re a mess,” Josh sighed and pressed the call button on the wall, over by his light switch.

The button sent a signal to the nurses’ station to request help, and it was only really meant to be used in an emergency, but Tyler was rapidly hyperventilating and Josh was losing patience.

“You’re so possessive over me, it’s weird, you get that right? It’s weird. Maybe you should get tested for BPD or something, because you’ve got crazy attachment issues.”

“Josh?” Maggie was the first nurse to respond, rushing into the bedroom.  
“Ty’s having a meltdown,”  
“Oh Tyler honey, okay, you’re safe, can you take some deep breaths for me?” She approached the sobbing boy slowly. “What happened Josh?”  
“Nothing, he followed me in here after my appointment, he’s obsessed with me or something. I told him I’m getting sent to Becket for a bit and he’s gone full stalker and freaked out about being away from me,”  
“Okay,” Maggie hummed.

Another two nurses joined them in the room, and Josh didn’t feel entirely comfortable with the crowding. Maggie being Maggie, she noticed his unease straight away.

“Guys can you escort Tyler back to his room please? He can have a dose of PRN if he needs it,” Maggie asked the pair, except when Maggie asked something it was more of an instruction rather than a suggestion, so the two nurses took Tyler out of Josh’s room, and Maggie closed the door behind them.

“I think he’s got BPD.” Josh picked up the ASOS packing and tossed it in his trash can. “He idealises me and can’t cope whenever I do anything that doesn’t centre around him.”  
“He’s new here, and he’s anxious. Whether he’s got BPD or not, I can understand why he’s so nervous and keen to hang onto his friends. Inpatient can be a lonely place.”  
“I like the solitude.” He sat at his desk, hugging his knee.  
“You’ve grown up here Josh, he’s grown up in a busy home surrounded by loved ones all the time. People tend to find comfort in the familiar.”  
“I guess,”

“I like your hoodie,”  
“Thanks,”  
“It’s a bit different from the one you showed me online. This one seems more salmon-y,”  
“I said the same thing to Ty!”  
“It’s a good colour on you though,” Maggie smiled and so he mirrored her. “Have you done any more illustrations since you last showed me your sketchbook?”  
“Not more than some scribbles,” Josh shook his head, lying. He’d been drawing skeletons again.

He wanted to be a fashion illustrator.

Initially he had wanted to become a fashion designer, with the idea to create pieces that accommodated for bad body image. Most of his life had been spent in oversized hoodies and sweatpants because he was so disgusted by anything even remotely exposing of his shape, but the simplistic outfits bored him. The idea had been to turn clothing on its head and come up with a collection that hid his body but was still capable of being beautiful and stylish. Imagine Yohji Yamamoto and Robert George Sanders’ styles had a baby - that was Josh’s goal. The stumbling block had been that he hated his body in everything and no idea made it beyond a first fitting on himself before being ripped to shreds in a moment of hysteria.

So after a couple of months of loathing everything that came out of his sewing machine, with his Dad’s advice, Josh decided to pack away the needles and bring out the paint brushes instead. Maybe he couldn’t make what he was imagining look nice on himself, but perhaps he could make it look equally as good on a piece of high quality paper with some inks.

Drawing his own ideas quickly lead to dozens of creations a day, and when his brain power was running low, he would open his hardback editions of Chanel or Dior or Tom Ford and copy down silhouettes in black pen to then splash with careful yet careless drops of colour. It entertained him for hours, and with each passing figure, the passion grew stronger.

The dream was to someday work for one of those fashion houses, or one of those publishers, so he could get his work printed and displayed. No longer did he want his work worn, he wanted it trapped on paper with wandering fingers fawning over it, wishing it could be held in their hands as it captured their minds. He wanted someone to see his paintings and be inspired how he was inspired.

He’d left school in the sixth grade because of his mental health, and hadn’t stepped foot back in a place of education ever since. He didn’t know much about much. He didn’t know science, or history, or anything really except for the way pretty clothes made him feel, so that was what he wanted to spend his life doing. One day he’d be free of the confines of mental health institutions, and free of the haunting, and then he would make his dreams Reality. He just had to get there first.

“Do you need some down time?”  
“Yes please,” Josh nodded, so Maggie made her way over to the door.  
“20 minutes till I need to attach your feeding tube up, okay?”  
“Fine,”

  
After dinner but before bed, the unit had quiet time. It was 90 minutes when everyone had to be in their own rooms, and there was to be no music, no phone calls, no talking, just relaxed time for people to process their day. At least that was the plan. The issue was that post mealtime was a horrible time for anybody with an eating disorder, so most nights there was sobbing and screaming and incidents which ruined the serenity, and most nights it came from Josh.

It didn’t make sense logically - he wasn’t like the other boys, he didn’t have to eat a meal that he would then feel guilty for. Instead he had to be hooked up to a pump for 15 hours a day, which ran at 90ml/hour with 1.5kcal/ml. It totalled 2025 calories a day, and according to his meal plan, he was also supposed to eat a further 75kcal orally and drink 750ml of water, but he never did.

It wasn’t as if he was receiving a huge number of calories over mealtime which pushed him over the edge, he just had to sit in the dining hall with everybody else for the sake of ‘community’, but even just being in the room triggered him, and 7.30pm was prime breakdown time. The weight of the day tended to get on top of him, and the darkness of night seeped into his skin, and before he knew it he was often being restrained by 4 or 6 nurses after self harming somehow, having diazepam shoved into his system and begging for death.

But not tonight. Tonight it was Tyler.

The walls were thin and Josh’s hearing was sharp - he could hear everything. He had been able to hear his neighbour pacing back and forth and back and forth, and then he could hear him sniffing away tears, and then sobbing, and then banging his head into the wall, then shouting when the nurses came, and now there was a hectic kerfuffle as a whole swarm of them tried to keep Tyler safe from himself.

Tyler has definitely got worse in the 3 weeks he had been a patient.

He had finally succeeding in losing enough weight to qualify for an inpatient bed, but had only been caught after collapsing in his home and being discovered by his brother, who had called an ambulance. The ambulance took him to the general hospital, who said he had all the usual anorexia complications, and an Oaktree vehicle had collected him 2 days later for admission.

When he joined he was pretty slim, and pretty anxious, but he wasn’t too bad in Josh’s opinion. Now he was considerably slimmer and constantly crying, but he still wasn’t bad. Josh had been bad, before this latest admission, Josh had been properly bad. Josh had been so small that his bones bruised against his skin, he’d been so small that he didn’t have the strength to walk and was wheelchair bound, he’d been so small that his heart couldn’t cope and he was in the ICU for 3 and 3/4 days. He was bad, Tyler was pathetic.

Tyler didn’t even need a feeding tube! He ate almost every single day! And he ate bad things as well, he ate almonds with their horrific fat content, and he drank orange juice which was pure sugar, and he even had rice cakes with all that sodium! Josh felt sick just thinking about his neighbour’s vile diet. He was more likely to get sick from heart disease than starvation! It was gross.

It wasn’t fair that everybody was next door looking after Ty, he didn’t need them, he didn’t need any help, he just wanted the attention because he was jealous of Josh. Josh was good at this, Josh was managing to maintain or sometimes even lose weight despite the fact they forcefully pumped him full of calories, because he wasn’t lazy like Tyler so he actually put in the effort and exercised. Tyler just purged, which was the weak person’s way out - Josh got up and did jumping jacks and jogged on the spot every single night as well as purging, only pausing for 5 minutes when the night nurses came round to do their checks. He’d learned their pattern soon enough, and the rest was easy.

Sure, sometimes he’d pass out and bump his head, but all the doctors presumed it was intentional self harm, rather than a byproduct of his brilliant exercise regime, so they rarely asked questions. Josh cared about his physique and his conditioning, he wanted to be healthy and fit, unlike Tyler. Tyler didn’t even exercise more than 2 or 3 hours a night, Josh listened out for it so that he could laugh at the feeble attempt - Tyler was weak.

It was actually really really not fair how many spotlights were on his neighbour. They were overreacting, Josh was sure that Tyler’s episode definitely didn’t require all the pandemonium that he could hear. Tyler was faking, he didn’t even really get panic attacks, he was just faking because he wanted to be more like Josh because Josh was an ideal role model for what someone should look like and be like - he was perfect! He was perfection and should be an inspiration to Tyler of what he could achieve if only he stopped scoffing and started exercising. He was perfect and it wasn’t fucking fair that everybody was shrouding round that no good fake try hard pathetic fat waste of space next door!

“Josh?” One of the night nurses came into his room. Her name was Lindsey. She was new-ish, only been there about a year, so she hadn’t seen Josh’s emergence from the cocoon.

“What?!”  
“We can hear you throwing things around and it’s really not helping Tyler to settle. Is there anything I can do to calm you down?”  
“I’m calm.” Josh didn’t have to throw a fifth book on the floor because the cavalry had heard. All he wanted was for someone, anyone, to care about him as much as they care about Tyler.

“Is it upsetting you? Hearing him scream? Because I can unlock the spare room at the end of the corridor if you want to try and get some peace?”  
“I’m fine,” he sat on the foot of his bed.

“I understand this must be very distressing for you, I know he’s your friend.” Lindsey took 3 steps into the room, listening to the crying and banging and screaming and shushing next door.  
“He’s not my friend.”  
“No?”  
“You really think I would be friends with somebody like that? Pff, no thanks,”

“What do you mean ‘somebody like that’ Josh?”  
“He’s lazy and a drama queen.”  
“He’s having a crisis, he’s not being a drama queen,”  
“Crisis? That’s a bit strong. He’s throwing a fit,”

“Josh, as someone with vast experience of psychiatric instability-“  
“Bitch,”  
“I mean no offence, simply being objective, but as someone who knows what Tyler’s going through, we need to try really hard to be empathic and compassionate with his situation.”  
“His situation? You mean his lil hunger strike?”  
“We both know anorexia is more than a hunger strike.” Lindsey insisted.

“Why’s he in crisis?” Josh yawned casually, intentionally emphasising the final word to draw attention to what an overkill it was.  
“You know I’m not at liberty to discuss other patients.”  
“Why are you here then?”  
“Because you’re throwing your stuff on the floor - your parents spent hundreds of dollars on these, didn’t they?”  
“That one was only $50,” Josh said as she picked up his hardback edition of Vanity Fair 100 years.  
“Valentino? That’s gotta be more,” Lindsey picked up another hardback.  
“It’s just the themes and variations edition, it was like $60,”  
“Okay, what about Louis Vuitton Complete Catwalk?” She took the third.  
“About 60 again,”  
“Then what do we have here, Ideas From Massimo Osti - I’ve never even heard of him, so I’m guessing this was crazy expensive?” The nurse picked the final book up from the floor where he had thrown in, and started flicking through the 400+ pages.

“You’ve never heard of Massimo Osti?? He founded C.P Company and Stone Island, he re-engineered menswear, he invented the four-colour process and silkscreen and rubber flax and rubber wool and-“ Josh’s words fell from his mouth when he realised that deep down the nurse didn’t care. “And it wasn’t crazy expensive, it was a bit over a hundred dollars and it was a gift from Mom the day after my brother died.”

Lindsey stopped looking at the pictures and closed the book, setting it down on a pile on his desk.

“It’s precious then, isn’t it? Maybe you shouldn’t be tossing it on the ground.”  
“It’s just a book,” Josh pulled his feet up onto the bed and wrapped his arms around his legs.  
“It’s from when Jord-“  
“You’re not allowed to talk about him,”  
“You brought-“  
“It’s in my file, Dr West put it in my file, nobody’s allowed to talk to me about him.”  
“It might h-“  
“NOBODY’S ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT HIM!” Josh leapt up and stormed over to the desk, scattering everything onto the ground with one vicious swipe of his arm.

“SHUT UP YOU DUMB BITCH, OKAY?!! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!”  
“I’m not gonna say anything if you don’t want me to, I was only following your lead because you brought him up Josh.”  
“SHUT UP!” He begged hysterically.  
“Josh,”  
“SHUT UP SHUT UP YOU’RE GONNA MAKE HIM COME BACK JUST SHUT UP! PLEASE!”  
“Okay,” Lindsey pressed the call button on the wall as Josh started to cry.  
“Shut up!”  
“I’m not saying anyth-“  
“SHUT UP!” He pleaded, his breath catching in his throat.

This wasn’t the plan, this wasn’t the plan - he needed company and he needed concern and he needed recognition and he needed validation, but he didn’t need Jordan. He didn’t want Jordan, he didn’t want any of this, he, he, he,

“He’s getting worked up over Tyler’s crisis,” Lindsey told the first man who responded to the call.  
“I’M NOT!” Josh kicked one of his Yves Saint Laurent hardbacks across the room and it thumped into the skirting board with a bang.  
“You clearly are mate, come on, let’s go down to room 6 where it’s a bit quieter,”  
“Don’t fucking TOUCH ME!” He screamed when the man reached out for his upper arm, and immediately Josh swung and punched him in the face. In turn, Josh was restrained and pulled to the ground for the first time of many that evening, wailing and crying. 


	2. Chapter 2

“Knock knock, can I come in?” Dr West opened his door a little but didn’t poke his head round until permitted.   
“Yep,”  
“Morning champ,”  
“Morning,” Josh put down his ink pen and swivelled on his seat to face the doctor.

“Ahh, what you working on today? Some of your own stuff?” The man came over to admire his sketchbook.   
“Copying out some Savage Beauty,”   
“Alexander McQueen,” he could remember the label just from the name of the collection, which gave Josh hope that he actually listened to him sometimes.

“It’s been a little while since you’ve done any designs of your own, hasn’t it?”  
“Uhhh, I guess?”  
“Feeling low on creativity?” Dr West asked.   
“I just know my stuff isn’t as good as all of this,” Josh responded honestly, gesturing to his bookshelf full of his favourite and most famous collections.   
“It’s just different, right? And that’s what fashion is all about, standing out from the crowd, trying something new, taking risks. You think Alexander McQueen was thinking about his work not being as good as Coco Chanel or Christian Dior when he designed this dress? No, he was trusting his own skill and imagination, and it paid off big time. I reckon putting a little courage into your own collection would see it take leaps and bounds forwards.”

“Sarah Burton designed this dress, not McQueen himself. He’s dead. Hanged himself.” Josh couldn’t help picking flaws in the argument.   
“Sarah Burton?”   
“Creative designer at the brand, she designed Kate Middleton’s wedding dress,”   
“Oh yes, of course,” Dr West pretended to be familiar with the name. “Well my point stands - if she hadn’t taken a risk and put herself out there, she never would have had such an amazing opportunity such as working on the royal wedding.”  
“I suppose,” he sighed a little.

“Have you been doing any of the other drawings? The skeletal people?”  
“Uh huh,” Josh confessed.   
“Can I see?”  
“Am I going to get in trouble?”  
“Trouble? No,” Dr West reassured him that it wasn’t a trap, so Josh took his other sketchbook out of his desk drawer and hesitantly opened it to his most recent additions.

This second sketchbook was contributed to far more often, almost every single day, but it was never ever shown to anybody except Dr West, and even that was rare. Dr West had discovered it in a routine room search for contraband once, and found it all very very interesting for some reason. It didn’t contain any of his fashion illustrations, instead it contained some of the images that preoccupied his mind constantly. The most common image was skeleton people, with beautiful bones and beautiful gaps, but then sometimes it would get darker and he would sketch dripping wounds or hanging nooses - he didn’t want to, but drawing them was a way of letting them leave the confines of his skull.

“What’s this?” Dr West asked, gesturing to an entry from a week back, squeezed in on a busy page of collar bones.   
“That’s, uh, that’s my brother’s body.”   
“Did you have to see it in real life?”  
“Yeh, I was there in the room when it happened,” Josh chewed on the side of his thumb. “But he looked partially dead for the last few weeks of his life anyway.”  
“And he looked like this?”  
“Yeh, just, just with more wires and lines and tubes and stuff, but I don’t like drawing those on him.”

Dr West gave him a moment to reflect, but Josh really didn’t want to think about it.

“When you see him sometimes, when he comes to visit you, does he look like this?” Dr West pointed to the sketch. “Or does he look healthy?”  
“Looks sick,”   
“Do you wish he would seem healthy?”  
“I wish he’d leave me alone.”

They weren’t technically psychosis, apparently. He had hallucinations of his little brother, but according to his team it wasn’t a psychotic illness, it was just grief. His parents had been very pleased with the lack of diagnosis, however Josh was upset because it meant they wouldn’t prescribe him antipsychotics, and Jordan could come and go as he pleased.

“Has he swung by this week?” Dr West handed him the sketchbook as he asked casually, and Josh nodded a little. “When?”  
“Last night.”  
“When you were awake or asleep?”  
“Both,” Josh pulled his feet up onto his chair and cuddled them.

“It was Lindsey’s fault.”  
“Lindsey from the night team?”  
“Yeh,”  
“Why was it her fault? What happened?”  
“I was fine and then she came in here and tried to make me feel guilty for how much money my parents spend on my books,”  
“You don’t need to feel guilty, these are all birthday and Christmas gifts and discharge rewards, right?”  
“Exactly,” Josh agreed. “And then she started saying stuff about him and I got upset and worked up and then he came.”

“I read the incident report.”  
“She probably lied in it.”  
“She said you were throwing some of your hardbacks around, trying to start a scene,”   
“Everyone was in with Tyler,”  
“I read his report too, seems like he had a tough night. I’m gonna go speak to him next, but thought I’d come here first.” Dr West spoke slowly. “You know Josh, it’s perfectly okay to need company and there’s nothing wrong with asking for support.”  
“I’m fine Doc, I don’t need this talk,”  
“All I’m saying is that if you were perhaps feeling a little left out last night, the thing to do is to walk to the nurses’ station and ask for someone to come and sit with you. Use your words not your actions; you’ve been getting much better at it these past few months and it’s important we implement those new skills, yeah?”

“I do use my words, I’m using my words now.” He played with the elastic cuff of his sweats.   
“Yeah you’re doing really well with me, and Maggie too, you’re making a big effort with both of us and we’re really proud of you,”  
“But,” Josh knew it was coming.   
“But we do keep having incidents in the evenings, don’t we bud? This amazing communication you’ve built up with Maggie and me, we now need to replicate with the night team.”  
“S’hard,”  
“I know it’s hard, I know, but you’ve got a really chaotic couple of weeks coming up with all the change that’s going to be happening, and I need you to be accessing the support you need, which only happens when you use your words.”

“What if the people at Becket or the people on the adult ward don’t listen to me? Then I put all the effort into my words and it’s for nothing.”   
“Well who’s the boss of the adult ward?”  
“You,”  
“Me, so I promise I’ll still have your back. I’ve been on your side since you were 12 years old and about yea high,” Dr West put his hand out about a metre above the ground. “And that’s not changing anytime soon. I reckon I’ve got another 10 years in me before retirement comes knocking, which is plenty of time to get you into a stable position in a supportive environment, so you don’t need to worry about the adult ward, okay?”  
“Yeh,” Josh knew he’d continue to worry about it anyway.   
“And as for Becket, I’ll do a full handover so I can pass on any messages you want explicitly stated, and they’ve looked after you well in the past, haven’t they?”

“It’s scary over there.” He mumbled.   
“Why’s it scary Josh?”  
“So far away, and, and it’s so loud,” Josh gulped. “And they’re a different kind of sick.”   
“The patients you mean?”  
“Yeh,”  
“Becket is primarily a psychosis service, and they accept you for their 6 week de-escalation programme because you have bereavement hallucinations, so you’re absolutely a qualifying patient, but you’re right that you are unique in your primary diagnosis being an eating disorder.”

“I like being around other people with eating disorders.”  
“Why’s that?”  
“Because they get it, they understand.”  
“That’s one potential explanation, but what’s the truth?” Dr West saw straight through him.   
“I’m not, I’m not sure what you mean,” Josh lied.   
“We talked about this last year, you confided in me that there’s some comfort that comes from knowing you’re the worst in the room. You get a little kick out of the fact you’re currently the longest admission on the ward, and the only one with an NG tube. Maybe Becket is hard because a lot of the patients are a lot more severe than you, which is something you don’t really have to deal with here.”

“Do you think I’m the most severe here?” He wanted validating.   
“I think answering that question would be unhealthy.”  
“Do you think I’m the unhealthiest?”  
“Josh,”  
“Do you think I’m worse than Tyler?”  
“Josh,” Dr West was sterner the second time. “It’s a disordered behaviour, this hunger of yours to be the sickest and the worst, and by responding to those questions, I’ll become complicit in facilitating that behaviour, so I’m not going to answer. If you ask again, I’ll have no choice but to get a nurse to come and sit with you whilst I continue my rounds.”   
“Don’t leave me yet,”  
“I won’t if you agree not to continue that line of questioning,” the doctor reassured him.

Josh loved that the man knew him so well, but he also hated it. Some days he didn’t want therapy, he didn’t want to be seen, he wanted to live behind his facade in relative peace.

“I’m not good at anything other than starving myself.”  
“You’re good at so many things Josh. You’re good at illustrating, you’re good at designing, you’re amazingly creative.”  
“I’ll never be the best illustrator or designer in the world though,”  
“Nor will you ever be the ‘Best’ anorexic in the world either Josh, because you know what happens to them? They die.”

He knew death was supposed to be a threat, supposed to turn him off the idea, but if anything it did the opposite.

“Remind me why death is a bad thing please Josh.” Dr West recognised it in his eyes.   
“My family already lost Jordan, I saw how bad it hurt them, I can’t do that to them again,” he recited the answer they always come to during their sessions together.   
“Good, well done,”

“Why was Tyler upset last night?”  
“Would you like it if I went next door and talked all about you and your traumas and insecurities with him? No. I’m not allowed and it’s not right for me to discuss other patients Josh.”  
“Traumas? He doesn’t have any traumas.”  
“Have you told him about your brother?”  
“No,”  
“No, so maybe there are things that he hasn’t told you; you can’t assume anything.” Dr West said. “If he chooses to talk to you then that’s perfectly fine, but I’ve gotta abide by physician patient privilege.”

“I think he should be sent away.”  
“You want him to transfer to Becket with you?”  
“No no, the opposite, I want him to go somewhere else, Sandwell Unit, or, or what’s that unit up in Cleveland that I went to when I was like 14?”  
“St John’s,”  
“Yeah, St John’s, anywhere,”   
“Why’s that?” The older man asked with a curious frown.   
“We’re bad for each other.”  
“Do you feel like he’s encroaching on your territory here? Is that it?”   
“No,” Josh lied - that was exactly it. Oaktree was his and now Tyler was ruining it. “He’s just clingy and I need space,”  
“You’ll have 6 weeks of space at Becket, then it’s really no time at all until you’re moving across the hall to the adult ward, do you think you can manage? Because it’s too soon for us to be thinking of transferring Tyler, he’s only been here less than a month and the general policy is 6 months of treatment before we begin to look elsewhere.”

Josh wanted to argue, to defend his space, but the little beeper on Dr West’s belt started going off.

“Shoot, sorry Josh, I’m needed over on Women’s,” he sighed once he pulled the pager off his belt.   
“Something going down?”  
“Two incidents at once, all hands on deck I’m afraid. We’ll pick this up later, yeah?”  
“Yeah,”

“You’ve got your appointment with Lada at 11, are you planning on going?”  
“Probably,”  
“Good lad, excellent, really excellent. Maggie’s down the hall if you need her,” the doctor was hurriedly making his way towards the door whilst maintaining eye contact. “Thanks for talking to me, always appreciate your trust.”   
“Thanks Doc, see you later,”  
“Bye,” he waved as he pulled the door to.

  
“Can we talk about Tyler?”  
“Tyler?” Josh echoed the name back to her.

Lada was Russian, in her mid 40s, single, tall, always with a red lip and clipped back hair, and brilliant at reading people. She’d been a part of Oaktree’s team for 5 years, almost as long as Josh had been a service user, and she was highly popular with other patients. For some reason however, Josh just couldn’t warm to her the same way and hadn’t let his walls down like he had to Maggie and Dr West.

“He’s your neighbour, no?”  
“Yes.”  
“Tell me about him please,”  
“I don’t know what to say,” Josh pulled his leg up close to his chest for comfort.   
“No shoes on my chair please.”   
“Sorry,” he let his leg sink back down again but didn’t know what to do with his hands, so tugged on his fingers instead.

“How did you meet?”  
“Oaktree waiting room. I was a day patient for a few weeks whilst they trialled me at home and he was an outpatient.”   
“And you say hello or Tyler say hello?” She messed up her tenses but Josh knew what she meant.   
“I said hello. He was with his mom, and he was crying. He was fairly new to this whole eating disorder thing and was super anxious or whatever about his appointment,”  
“So you wanted to help him?”  
“I guess,”

“Now these days, now that you are both inpatient, it is my understanding that he is very anxious and crying a lot, but you are maybe not so keen to help him. What’s different?”   
“Did Dr West ask you to talk about this?”  
“No, it’s my own observation.”  
“You barely ever come to the ward, you haven’t observed shit. Westy put you up to it, didn’t he? Or Maggie?”  
“My own question formed from my own interpretation of your case notes.”  
“Aka Westy wrote in my file that I’ve been ignoring Tyler.”

“Why have you been ignoring Tyler?” She wouldn’t let the topic go.   
“I dunno, he’s clingy,”  
“You struggle with male friends, don’t you?”  
“Do I?”  
“You tell me.” Lada put the ball back in his court.

“I had that, uh, that thing, with Darren, last year, but I don’t think that means I have a problem with guys,”  
“By thing you mean sexual relationship.”  
“I mean I gave him head one time because I was bored,”  
“You don’t believe it’s indicative of your sexuality?”  
“Are you calling me gay?”  
“I’m asking what you identify your sexual orientation as being.”  
“I don’t know, I don’t, eugh, what’s the one that’s nothing?”   
“Asexuality.”  
“Ace, yeh, probably ace.”

“If you think you might be ace, why did you engage in sexual relations with Darren? Do you feel societal pressures to conform to the expectations set upon teenagers?”  
“Head one time hardly counts.”  
“You frequently kissed, correct?”  
“I don’t remember.” He did.   
“You don’t need to be ashamed Josh, I simply am curious,” her long fingers waved through the air naturally.   
“I dunno if I’m ace or what. I haven’t been to school since I was 12, I, I’ve had no exposure to healthy normal teenagers, I don’t know what’s typical and I’ve got nothing to compare my experiences to.”

“I think it’s typical to be confused as this age.”  
“I’m not confused, I’m not.” Josh said without hesitation. “I just don’t care enough to think about it.”  
“Why don’t you care?”  
“I’m in a psych hospital, I’ve been in a psych hospital for years, and I am going to be in a psych hospital for years to come. It’s not as if I need to be thinking about finding someone to settle down with someday.”  
“Why not? I don’t follow.”  
“You ask why a lot.”  
“It’s my job.” Lada replied. “Why not Josh?”  
“I don’t want to burden someone with my care.”

“Do you feel like a burden to your parents?”  
“No,”  
“Good, I’m glad,”  
“Really they’ve got nothing to do with me, they just dropped me off here after the funeral and occasionally come back for visits.”  
“You’ve been discharged into their care several times, have you not?”  
“I go home for a couple of days but usually end up staying with my granny.” Josh wanted to hug his legs again, but knew he wasn’t allowed to.

“Why Granny and not Mom and Dad?”  
“Don’t like their house.”  
“Why?”  
“S’kinda obvious, isn’t it?”  
“Perhaps to you, but not to me Josh. Can you explain it please?”  
“It’s like a shrine to him,”  
“To who?”  
“You know who.”  
“Tell me who.”  
“Fuck off,” Josh couldn’t resist any longer and brought his leg up again.   
“Shoes,”  
“Fuck off!”

“I know it’s difficult, I know you don’t like talking about him, but the healing process-“  
“Screw your healing process, it’s bullshit, he’s been dead almost 6 years and I still have nightmares every night.”  
“And you think continuing to suppress any memory of him is going to help?? No, Josh, it won’t.”   
“You don’t know that!!”  
“I have a doctorate in trauma reha-“  
“You don’t know me!” He cried out in frustration.

“I think you’re scared.”  
“No shit Sherlock.”  
“Your brother Jord-“  
“Don’t use his name, you don’t have the right to speak his name.” Josh growled protectively.   
“Jordan’s treatment was long and painful and consistently unsuccessful, and that meant you spent months and months of your formative days just watching him get sicker and sicker, knowing there was nothing you could do. You hated that lack-“  
“Stop it,”  
“That lack of control and needed to do something to put the power back in your hands. You couldn’t influence his health but one thing you could control was your intake. When things were spinning out of control for him, you tightened the reins on yourself. Your way of coping with your little brother slowly dy-“  
“Shut up,”  
“Dying in front of you was to channel that pain into an obsession, which was food and your weight. Every time something bad happened, your response was to restrict. You couldn’t break the habit and-“  
“Shut up shut up shut up.” He chanted under his panicked breath.

“And now you’re here, 17 years old, trapped in the clutches of anorexia. You like to pretend you’re a cliché, that this all started because your interest in fashion exposed you to the body shaming culture of modelling, but we both know that’s not true Josh. This never started off about body image, it evolved into that but was birthed from your need for control.”  
“I want you to stop.”

“Now Tyler’s entered onto the scene, and maybe you’re scared because there’s some underlying sexual tension between you, and your lack of will to explore your homosexual tendencies leaves you in a situation that you’re unprepared for, which triggers your fear of lack of control. Attraction is illogical at times and you loathe your heart making decisions over your head, because you want to, nay, need to control everything, and you feel like you can’t even control your own desires.” Lada formulated as Josh clutched his knee close, nails digging into his palms, breath catching in his throat over and over again.

“Or alternatively, you’re not attracted to him, but you see him as a brother, and you can’t accept another brotherly figure into your life since the loss of Jordan-“  
“Stop, enough, done, stop.” Josh reached his limit with tears in his eyes and stood up.   
“We have 35 minutes rem-“  
“I said ENOUGH!” He screeched back.

Even though it was against the rules, Josh stormed out of the therapy session early, charging towards his bedroom, angry yet vulnerable.

Every single button he had, she’d pressed, and for what? Why? Was she trying to make him, Jordan, come? Surely she must realise that she was going to make him come... did she want for him to come? Maybe she wanted to observe him hallucinating first hand, but what kind of psycho fucking bitch would intentionally trigger a hallucination in their client? She was a crazy fucking psycho!!

“Josh?” A soft fragile voice called out questioningly, and in his blind rage he realised he’d let himself into Tyler’s room.

Maybe subconsciously it was where he wanted to be.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Tyler stood up from his bed and approached Josh carefully. “Deep breaths, did you just have weigh in?”  
“Jordan,” he squeaked, covering his face.   
“Jordan? Who’s Jordan?”  
“He’s gonna come, he’s gonna come! Ty you gotta stop him coming, please, he’s gonna come,”  
“Alright okay, alright, uhh, alright, I’m gonna close the door so nobody can come in,” Tyler tried to problem solve as Josh slipped down the wall, burning tears scalding his cheeks.

  
“Hey,”  
“Hi,” Tyler stopped the sit ups that Josh had walked in on and looked guilty, like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t have been. Of course exercise was technically forbidden on the ward, outside of supervised yoga, but everybody did it and Josh didn’t even recognise or register it as wrong.

“Can I come in?”  
“Uh, yeah, of course, sorry about the mess, I, uh, I was just looking for something I lost and, uh, and yeh, it got messy, I’ll, I’m gonna clean it up, sorry, bear with me, sorry,” Tyler rushed to start clearing up all the clothes that had clearly been pulled out of his drawers manically, panting to catch his breath whilst kicking piles to one side.

“Is that it? What you lost?” Josh saw the glint of the silver blade underneath the side table immediately and pointed it out to Tyler.   
“Shit,” he was expecting to get a lecture and hurried to pick it up. “It was an accident, I didn’t mean to pack it, I don’t even know where it came from I swear. I’ll hand it in tomorrow and I won’t-“  
“Tyler, it’s part of the dance that everyone here does. If you manage to sneak it past the nurses and past the searches, you get to keep it, fair game,”   
“Don’t tell anyone??” He looked stressed and flustered, his fate hanging in Josh’s hands.   
“I won’t.”

Tyler tucked the blade down the side of the wardrobe - a classic hiding spot, which meant it would definitely get found when the staff did their next random sweep, but Josh said nothing. Just because he wasn’t going to rat him out, didn’t mean he was going to help either.

“Thanks,” Tyler sighed, still tugging on his fingers.

“Can I sit down?”  
“Yeh,” Tyler gestured to his bed, which Josh climbed up onto first, with the owner not far behind. “Is everything okay?”  
“Everything? No. Somethings are though,” Josh sniffed and it hurt the nostril with the tube rammed down it.

“I wanted to come say thank you for what you did earlier when I had my little, uh, episode thing,”   
“That’s okay, you do the same for me,” Tyler shrugged.   
“No, not true. When you were crying in my room yesterday, I just called the nurses on you.”  
“And I called the nurses on you today.”  
“But you also sat with me, tried to calm me down, told me I was safe. Yesterday I ignored you and tried on my new hoodie as you cried.”  
“I was being hysterical though, it was probably best you didn’t encourage me.” Tyler continued defending him, which was a sweet gesture that he didn’t deserve.

“Either way, thanks for, uh, for looking after me. Those ones are tough for me, it’s what usually develops into my incidents, it’s why they’re sending me to Becket High Security,”  
“You did good not to let it escalate then,”  
“Thanks,” Josh smiled weakly.

“Have you heard from Becket yet? Are you approved to move there?”   
“Should hear by Monday,”  
“Do you want to go?”  
“Yeh, they, uh, they’re a psychosis unit so they do stuff a little differently. They don’t care as much about anorexia so I can get away with more crap and they usually don’t weigh me, which makes a nice change.”

Josh had never mentioned, let alone confessed, anything about psychosis to Tyler before.

“Is it a good move for you in terms of recovery though? It seems kinda like a backwards step.”  
“Says the guy who’s been working out and just hid a blade.”  
“Yeh no, I’m, I, I didn’t mean it like that, I just meant it seems a strange thing for Dr West to do. If you’re struggling, why would he send you somewhere that doesn’t support you how you need?”   
“They do less ED stuff because they work more on hallucinations and stabilising them, which I do need.”

Tyler didn’t say anything immediately.

“Hallucinations?”  
“Yeh,”  
“Was that what, uh, what earlier was? When you were telling me to keep Jordan away? Was he a hallucination?”  
“Kinda,”

Josh didn’t know how open he wanted to be with Tyler. On the one hand he was the closest thing he’d had to a friend in years and he wanted to be brave and trust him, but at the same time he was acutely aware that every moment they spent together, Tyler was learning from him and copying him, and the last thing he wanted was to lead someone else down the same miserable path as him.

“Well I’m-“  
“He was my brother.” Josh interrupted. “Jordan, he was my little brother. He would have been 12 now but he had a high grade astrocytoma, a cancerous brain tumour, and he died when he was 6 years old,”  
“I’m so sorry Josh,”  
“It was really fucking shit, for lack of better words. He was fighting it for nearly 3 years, and it gave him seizures and made half his body go limp and stopped him walking and eventually he couldn’t talk or even remember us. He was a toddler and he was so fucking sick, and I have a sister who was only 5 weeks old when he got diagnosed, plus another sister, and yeh, it was a shit time for us all.”  
“I’m sorry,”

Josh knew talking about it could trigger him, so he was on edge, waiting for the sick little boy to appear.

“Do you hallucinate him a lot?”  
“Most days at the moment.” Josh nodded. “I dream about him too.”  
“Maybe it’s his spirit, maybe he’s your guardian ange-“  
“It’s not real and when I go to Becket they give me enough pills that he stops coming.”  
“Do they not medicate it here?”  
“No, they say it’s grief that I’ve got to deal with rather than drug out, but I’ve been trying to deal with it for years and it’s not getting any better. I’m not getting any better.”

“You developed anorexia when he was sick, didn’t you?”  
“Yeh,” Josh fiddled with his sleeve but Tyler waited patiently. “They, uh, my therapists love to bring it up, they think it’s a perfect representation of everything being tangled up, but my parents actually got me admitted for the first time on the day of the funeral. We went straight from the wake to the hospital and I haven’t been properly home since.”

“How long’s it been, 6 years?”  
“6, yeah. I’ve only been inpatient for about 4 and a half, but my 18 scattered months of freedom were pretty much all with my granny. It’s tough going back home, brings back a lotta memories, and the tributes to Jordan everywhere don’t exactly help.”  
“And to think I was crying on the phone to my mom earlier about being away for 3 weeks.” Tyler whispered to himself more than Josh.

“It helps, going to Becket?”  
“Yeah,”  
“Could you go long term?”  
“No, they don’t accept ED patients longer than 6 weeks, no psychosis unit in Ohio does, so I’m stuck in EDUs like this one.”  
“At least you’ll get a few weeks there soon if they accept you for a crisis stay though,”

Josh nodded, feeling strange about having his secrets exposed to sunlight.

“I’m sorry. Yesterday I tried to make you feel guilty for going elsewhere for treatment and I’m sorry. It was selfish of me,”  
“Anorexia’s selfish by nature, it’s not your fault,”  
“It’s not just anorexia though, I’m, I’m homesick and scared and you’re the only familiarity I have. To hear you’re leaving was too much, I freaked, but I need to check myself because it’s not fair to hold you back, just because I’m scared of being on my own.”  
“And I’ll be back soon anyway.”   
“Yeah, plus with regards to you being moved to adults, I’m sure Westy would let you come upstairs for cross-ward visits, and I’ll be 18 in December so it won’t be long till I’m with you again.”

“Tyler, it’s May.”  
“I know,”  
“You’re thinking about still being inpatient beyond December? That’s more than half a year away,”  
“I’ve been here almost a month already,”  
“This is your first admission though, aren’t all beginner admissions 12 weeks?”  
“The first wave of treatment is a 12 week block but Dr West said it can be extended if I’m treatment resistant.”  
“What makes you think you’re treatment resistant?” Josh asked.   
“Other than the fact I’m resisting treatment?” Tyler raised his eyebrows but Josh’s heart sunk.

“Don’t follow my lead. Don’t use me as an example. Just because I haven’t got better, doesn’t mean you can’t.”  
“Josh, we both know people don’t recover from eating disorders.”  
“Yes they do, they can, you can,”  
“Why haven’t you then? If inpatient is so effective, why have you still on a tube?”  
“I just told you Ty, my brother, he makes things complicated. You can get better though,”

“Are you saying my eating disorder isn’t complex, just because mine didn’t start the same way as yours?”  
“No, of course I’m not, I’m just saying that this is an eating disorder unit and you’re dealing with an eating disorder - this is a good chance for you to get better. I’ve got bereavement and psychosis to contend with which get in the way of their programme, but if you try really hard then you can get better Tyler.”  
“See, when you say things like that, you go from someone I can relate to and trust, to just another background voice,” Tyler avoided eye contact by playing with his fingernails.   
  
“I want you to get better,”  
“Why?”  
“Why? Because you’re my friend and I care about you,”   
“Translation: this is your stomping ground and you want it back.”  
“Woah, Tyler, where the heck is this coming from?? I just opened up to you, I told you something that almost nobody else knows, and you respond by attacking my sincerity?”   
“We all know your sincerity is about as legit as your attempt at recovery.”

Josh couldn’t even begin to understand why Tyler had turned on him.

“Take that back,”  
“No.”  
“Why would you say that Tyler??”  
“Because it’s true! You’re not even trying to get better, that’s why you always relapse so fast. I always knew you were avoiding going home but now you’ve told me why, I know for certain.”  
“Not wanting to be around a shrine to my dead brother is a valid reason to not want to go home.”  
“So you admit it! You’re not trying to get home, you’re trying to stay inpatient for as long as you can to avoid having to go home and confront your shit, and you do that by not even trying to recover.”

“I’m not saying that’s the case, but even if it was, so what??”  
“So why the fuck do you think you have the right to tell me to try and get better and engage in the 12 week programme and be home before December, huh? Why do I have to get better if you’re allowed to avoid the outside world in here forever more.”  
“Because the outside world for me is Hell, you have no idea what losing a 6 year old does to a family - we will never be okay again. But you? You?? Your family adore you Tyler, they’d do anything for you and rather than thanking them and counting your blessings, you’re here, plotting how long you’re going to hide away from them.” Josh told him bluntly. “You had everything and you’ve thrown it away. At least I had nothing before anorexia, same as I do now,”

“If by everything you mean horribly divorced parents, my two youngest siblings ripped away from me and shipped off to Mississippi by a manipulative demeaning excuse for a father-“  
“Daddy issues? Really?”  
“Dead brother issues? Really?” Tyler snapped back.

“I thought this could be good for both of us, me opening up, but thank you for reminding me why I never tell anybody anything. Enjoy the rest of your evening Ty, don’t swing by my room ever again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last instalment coming tomorrow <3


	3. Chapter 3

Most psychiatric hospitals Josh had been in weren’t equipped for placing NG tubes. The actual process wasn’t that difficult, it was just threading a tube through a nostril, using a sip of water to get it down his throat and continuing to push it through until reaching his stomach. Josh could probably do it with his eyes closed. However the tricky part was making sure it was placed correctly so they didn’t end up feeding his lungs or something, so he had to go for an X-ray after each placement to check it really was in his stomach.

At other EDUs, that meant a half day trip to the nearest general hospital, just to be mistreated by doctors who thought he was a time waster and nurses who were tired of having to redo the same procedure on him every couple of days because he kept pulling it out. He understood their frustration, just wished a little of that understanding could be reciprocated.

Oaktree was different though. As the whole unit was just for eating disorder patients, one of the many facilities they had was a lab room just for the placement and maintenance of feeding tubes, so Josh didn’t have to get hauled off to the ER by staff but could instead stay in his pyjamas and wait for the nice lady to help him out without needing to even go outside.

“Alight honey, this has come back all good,” she came back from checking his latest X-ray with a warm smile. “It’s sitting comfortably within your stomach so your team can safely hook you back up to feeds as soon as they please,”  
“Thank you,”  
“You’re welcome,”

Josh knew, or at least he knew whilst in a rational mindset, that pulling out his tube was pointless. Every time he took it out, they only put it back in again, but still when he was feeling powerless and trapped there was some relief to be found in yanking out the damn thing.

“I have to warn you Josh, this is the fifth time in 3 weeks that you’ve removed the NG yourself; if it happens again this month then Dr West will ask me to place a bridle,”

The bridled NG wasn’t just a tube, it also had a fabric loop that was threaded around his septum and secured by a plastic clip to supposedly stop him pulling it out again. Admittedly it did make the process harder since any tugging would be against his nose, but the bridles were easy enough to cut and remove if he found access to a blade, which was way easier than the staffing team knew. Still, he preferred to avoid the hassle and pain of bridles.

“I won’t do it again.”  
“If you’re feeling distressed, do you know your care plan?”  
“Yep,”  
“Do you want me to put a request on your file for somebody to go over it with you again? Make sure it’s still catering to your needs?”  
“No thanks, I’m seeing Dr West later anyway,”  
“Okay Josh, well, hopefully I won’t see you again too soon.”  
“You won’t, I’m, I’m gonna keep this one,” Josh let his fingers explode the new taping on his other cheek.   
“I think I remember you saying that last time.” She smiled. “Do your best, yeah?”  
“Yeah,”

The nurse went over to the phone on the wall and dialled up Ward 3.

“Hi, I’m sending Josh back up, yeh, yeh he did great, okay, bye,”  
“Is Maggie gonna come get me?”  
“She’s gonna meet you at the stairs,”  
“Okay, thanks again,”  
“You’re most welcome Josh,” she opened the door for him and let him walk down the hall by himself.

The hall was quiet. Most corridors were loud with patients, either with doors leading to therapy rooms or bedrooms, but the tube placement lab was downstairs with all the offices and the peace made for a nice change.

He had a bad night after opening up to Tyler. Jordan had come by and shit had gone down, and he’d spent time in the first aid room before the tubing room getting stitches put in his thigh. Thankfully with an application already submitted to Becket, the staff at Oaktree weren’t going to do anything as a disincentive - like take away his garden time or his phone or his privacy, so instead the day would be spent picking up the pieces. Most days were like that lately, and by lately he meant for the past half decade.

“Hey sweetheart,”  
“Hi,” he smiled when he saw Maggie in the stairwell.   
“How did it go?”  
“No problemo, she got it first time and I didn’t resist at all,”  
“Nice,” she held her hand up and Josh high-fived it, then they started climbing the stairs together.

“Any plans for the rest of the day?”  
“Review work with Dr West at 2.30, one of my favourite fashion critics is uploading a new video at 4, otherwise nothing else.”  
“Okay, so if you’re free this morning, shall we grab a cup of tea together in the staff room?”   
“That would be nice, yeh,”

Because the men’s services were considerably smaller than the women’s at Oaktree, and because the 6-bed ward wasn’t even at capacity, the staff size for ward 3 was pretty small. Despite that, they had a nice staff room filled with soft clean couches as well as tables to work at, and Josh always enjoyed the treat of getting to go in there, which Maggie knew.

There wasn’t a lot that Maggie didn’t know about Josh; if he was honest with himself, she knew him better than anybody else, including his parents. They still saw him as the scared overwhelmed little boy that he was when they admitted him, they didn’t understand the bitterness and anger that had seeped into his personality, so he always felt fake around them. With Maggie he could be himself.

“Is this new?” Josh ran his hand over the back of the brand new couch they had in the staff room.   
“Yep, we got it yesterday, finally replaced that knackered blue one, looks good hey?”   
“Yeah really good, can I sit on it?”  
“Of course darling,” she nodded whilst going over to the kitchenette to make their drinks.

There was a common room on the ward for patients, but Josh didn’t really like going in there. The only TV available was in there so the other boys were glued to the screen all day long and Josh preferred his own space, which meant the only time he ever really sat on a couch was in the staff room.

“Here ya go, one cup of tea for you,” she passed him a mug and sat down next to him with her own.

Josh didn’t drink tea.

He didn’t really drink anything, not even water, and he didn’t really need to whilst he had the feeding tube. Technically his team were supposed to make him drink 750ml a day but they usually gave up after getting him to have a few mouthfuls to rinse his dry mouth, knowing it wasn’t worth the fallout.

He did drink with Maggie though - it wasn’t a cup of tea, tea had too many calories, it was a cup of hot water that they both pretended was tea so that he could feel included. It was hot so he could warm him hands around the mug, and even though it was strange to some, Josh liked that Maggie played along in an attempt to give him some normality.

“So,”  
“So,” Josh smiled, hoping he was in for a good gossip rather than a lecture.   
“You’ll never guess which nurse has been asked to transfer back here from St John’s,”  
“Oh my god, not Sour Faced Susan??”  
“You guessed it. Apparently, at least according to Linda down at front desk, but apparently another doctor has said he doesn’t want to work with her anymore,”  
“Surely Westy won’t take her back though, right?”

Before Maggie could answer, her pager started going off. She grabbed it from her belt and pressed a button to silence it, then refocused on Josh.

“Do you need to get that?”  
“No it’s okay, it’s just a call button in one of the rooms. The other nurses can go,”  
“Whose room?”  
“You know I can’t talk about other patients, mister. Back to Susan,” she smiled but the pager started buzzing and beeping again, and Josh could see his neighbour’s room number flash up on the panel.   
“Tyler,”  
“Nosey,” she lightheartedly scolded him. “If it goes a third time then I’ll need to check that the situation is being managed, but for now we’re okay to keep talking,”

“We had a fight last night,”  
“You and Ty?”  
“Yeh,” Josh sipped a little of his fake tea.   
“I’m sorry Josh, that sounds really tough. Do you wanna talk about it at all?”  
“I told him about, um, you know who,”   
“You did?”   
“Yeh, and not just a little bit, I told him all about the tumour and why I go to Becket sometimes and everything,”  
“Oh Josh! Wow sweetie, good for you, just wow - Dr West will be so impressed when you tell him later, gosh, I’m proud of you honey, well done,” she scrunched her face up excitedly and Josh laughed a little, not really knowing how to accept the compliment.

“He, uh, Tyler, he was nice at first, but then he got really bitchy, like, um, like saying he doesn’t think I’m even trying to get better anymore and that I’m just hiding in hospital and avoiding going home, which isn’t even remotely true!”  
“No I know it’s not Josh, you’re trying to get back to your Granny, aren’t you? Being in the old house is hard because it brings up so many nasty memories, but you’ve done a really good thing by planning to spend your future time off the ward in an environment that feels safer to you, which isn’t something you should ever be made to feel guilty about. Of course we’d love to make your house feel like home to you again, however setting realistic and attainable goals is the best way to plan forwards and I’ll happily explain to Tyler, with your permission, why going back home to your folks isn’t really a viable option in terms of your long term comfort.”

Josh never even let himself think about his brother, let alone spend this long talking about him, so he had to admit that he was surprised not to have started hallucinating yet. He supposed being in a safe space with Maggie made it easier.

“I, I am trying to get better,”  
“I believe you Josh,”  
“Tyler doesn’t know anything about getting better or about me, or anything, he, he shouldn’t even be talking to me,”  
“Well he’s your friend Josh, and talking tends to come along with that, but you’re right that he doesn’t understand the intricacies of your circumstances and therefore shouldn’t be passing judgement on them.”

Josh put his cup of tea down and hugged his legs. Maggie didn’t say anything about his feet being up on the new couch, because she got that it didn’t matter.

“I don’t want to spend my life in hospital. Nobody would ever choose to be in this position.”   
“No,” Maggie agreed with a sympathetic shake of her head.   
“Just because he openly admitted to me that he was actively aiming for an admission so he can prove to himself that he is really sick, doesn’t mean everybody else here wants to be hospitalised.”

“The thing to remember is that eating disorders are really sneaky and can take logical thoughts hostage, and trick our brains into making bad decision that it rationalises with lies. Tyler’s poorly brain may very well have wanted to get so unwell that he needed intervention, but that goal was not his choice, it’s an illness he has and an illness we’re trying to treat. Competitiveness and always comparing oneself to others is a very common trait of anorexia, so him wanting to be, quote, ‘sick enough’ for inpatient is actually something we hear quite a lot. Anorexia can make people obsessed with being the sickest and the worst or else they see themselves as failures, and I know that’s a concept you’ve mentioned before Josh, so even though you don’t want to be in hospital, I’m sure you can empathise with Tyler’s ongoing unhealthy desire to be sicker and sicker. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Tyler actually wants to be in hospital, I’m sure deep down he would much rather be anywhere than here.”

“I feel threatened by him,”  
“That’s interesting, do you know why you feel that way?”  
“I guess, I’m, um, there’s no way I can say this without sounding like a bad person,”  
“Josh, I know you, I know you’re a good person, and nothing shared between us in this conversation will sway that opinion of mine. You can speak freely and trust it won’t change anything,”

Josh didn’t know whether to believe her, taking a moment to fiddle with his new tube taping before deciding to continue.

“When I met him, um, downstairs, in the outpatients centre, he wasn’t struggling all that much, I mean he was unhealthy but still managing to eat a couple of times a day,”  
“Yeah,”  
“I dunno, I guess talking to him made me feel like I was better at starving myself; I know I shouldn’t be proud of that, but you’re right, comparisons are definitely a huge part of this, and, and being trapped in here, my perspective is totally fucked,”   
“That’s absolutely true Josh, when you’re only exposed to other boys with eating disorders, it really shifts what your view of normal is,”  
“Yeah, especially being here since I was 12, I’m, I’m so used to people eating next to nothing that it was actually really strange to me that people were worried about Tyler back when his intake was like 1200 a day. It made me feel like I was really really good at restricting, and that’s a nice way to feel when usually your eating disorder just constantly tells you how fat and greedy and shit you are,”  
“I can appreciate that.”

“I’m kinda ashamed to admit that for the first few weeks we were FaceTiming, I mostly talked to him because comparing myself to him made me feel better at being anorexic.”   
“Right,”  
“But I dunno, I, I guess that changed the more we talked because I realised I liked him as a person, rather than just someone to compare stats with, that’s when I started caring about him,”  
“Yeah,”  
“Then it got kinda sad seeing him sink down and down towards my level, I felt and still do feel responsible, like just how I compared myself to him, he was doing the same to me, and I made him feel like he had to restrict more to be valid,”  
“Josh, Tyler’s eating disorder is not your fault.”  
“No I know, but I contributed to his decline,”

Maggie didn’t say anything, waiting for him to continue, but the silence confirmed his suspicions.

“Since he got admitted, it’s, it’s flipped the other way, now all of a sudden he’s better at it than me, he’s losing quicker than me and getting fewer calories than me and having more incidents than me and I feel really really overwhelmed by it all,”  
“Overwhelmed in what way?”  
“Like my whole identity is disintegrating. I’m, I’m, I’m not good at anything, I don’t have any skills, I don’t have any friends or hobbies or anything, I'm, I’m nothing except an anorexic, and now it feels like Tyler’s stealing the only thing I’m good at. Without anorexia I’m nothing,”

Maggie put down her tea and held out her arms, and he shuffled across and let her hold him gently, her thumb stroking his arm.

“12 is so incredibly young Josh, it’s so incredibly young to be submerged in this horrible world of eating disorders, and I can understand how having this mental illness as you’ve gone through your teenage years has been synonymous with your identity, but it’s not who you are. When I think of Josh, I don’t think of you as the anorexic kid I know, I think of all the fun we have when we try to narrow your online shopping cart from 5 million items to 5 by playing roulette, and how talented at drawing and wonderfully creative you are, and all the eye opening and touching conversations you share with me. There’s so much more to you than your eating habits and weight, and Tyler arriving on the ward does nothing to change that.”

“S’just hard,” Josh whispered. “I want to be a good friend to him but I don’t know how. I, I want him to get better but then he shuts me out because he knows I’m being a hypocrite, but, but I can’t support him in getting worse because then I have no choice but to get even worse so I can stay ahead of him,”  
“Do you know what I’m gonna say?” Maggie asked softly, reassuring him with her steady thumb stroke.   
“No,”  
“You can’t beat him at this Josh, otherwise it’s going to end up killing you both. The only way out is to rise above, and to bring him up with you,”

  
“Hey, can I, uh, can I join you?”   
“Josh sweetheart, now’s not a great time,” the nurse sat with Tyler at dinner time answered on his behalf.

Tyler looked awful.

He had an egg shaped lump swollen in the middle of his forehead, up against his hair line, that was covered with a dressing and some tape, which still showed the shadow of blood through it. His incident had clearly involved head banging.

Beyond the wound, Tyler’s whole demeanour had declined and his eyes had that heavy drugged lag to them, suggesting he’d been given a whole lot of pills to calm him down. His arms were covered in cuts and he was hunched over his plate of mash potatoes and peas, crying silently.

“You know the rules Josh, no interrupting a supervised meal please,” Annie the nurse said again when he didn’t move, hand clutching the wheeling pole that held his pump and feeding tube formula that was connected to his nose.

“I, I won’t interrupt, I just wanna talk to Tyler,”  
“That’s interrupting if ever I heard it, come on sweetheart, you’ve been here long enough to know how this works, so either go to your bedroom or go and sit in the common room if you need a member of staff to keep you company, and wait until after quiet time to talk to Ty,”  
“I’ll stay and distract him,”  
“Josh, this is your last warning,”  
“Can he s-stay?” Tyler whispered timidly.

Annie sighed, looking down at Tyler’s plate, looking at her clipboard and the worksheet she was completing on his consumption, then looked back at Josh.

“You need to try 5 more spoonfuls of mash before I even consider letting you get down. You tell me Ty, what’s going to be most helpful in making that happen? Having Josh sit and join us? Or you and me working on this just the two of us?”  
“Josh,”   
“Alright, siddown Josh, but let’s not make this a habit, okay?” Annie gestured to the seat next to Tyler and he obeyed gratefully.

The other boys had all finished what they were assigned to eat for their dinner and had been allowed to leave. All the bathrooms would be locked for a while to try and stop anyone purging, and Josh knew Kai was on 1:1 support for the next hour but wasn’t sure about George or Antony, he just knew they’d start to hear the chorus of incidents soon enough.

Meanwhile Josh had been receiving his NG feeds for the past 4 hours, and would continue to for the rest of the night. He was made to sit in the dining hall with George - a genuinely recovering patient - just so the whole group was together, but now everyone had left except for Annie and Tyler.

Josh didn’t want to risk upsetting his neighbour during what was easily the most stressful part of the day on the eating disorder unit, however he looked so low that Josh found himself unable to walk past him, and was appreciative that Tyler had allowed him to stick around.

“I’m, uh, about last night, I, I’m sorry,”   
“For what?” Tyler sniffed, mopping his face with his hand, avoiding eye contact.   
“Coming in your room, putting my personal burden onto you like I did, belittling your problems, and, uh, and acting like your condition isn’t serious. I was being a bad friend,”   
“What?? No, no, I, it, it was all me, I, I, you opened up to me and I treated you like shit,” Tyler muttered guilty.

“Guys, I’m glad you want to sort whatever this is out, but I think you should wait until Tyler’s finished his meal.” Annie spoke up.   
“I don’t want any more.” Tyler pushed his tray away.   
“5 spoonfuls of mash.” Annie pushed it back to him.   
“I said I’m done,”  
“Ty,” Josh grabbed his hand to stop him pushing it back across the table yet again. “Come on, we’ll, uh, we’ll do it together, you handle the mash and I’ll take the peas.”   
“You’re going to eat some Josh?” Annie seemed just as shocked as he was that those words had come out of his mouth.   
“Sure, why the heck not?” Josh sighed and the nurse flashed a smile.   
“Wonderful! Great, let me grab you a spoon, or would you prefer a fork?”  
“Spoon please, my, uh, my long handled soda spoon preferably? Maggie keeps it separate,” He’d always been fussy about cutlery and the ward had thankfully adapted to that, giving him his own drawer in the kitchen.   
“I know just the one, give me two seconds,”

Annie scuttled off to the kitchen, leaving her clipboard behind that Josh picked up and quickly read how much Tyler had managed of his dinner so far.

“8 peas,”   
“I had a bad day,”  
“You don’t have to justify yourself, I think you’ve done really well Ty, that’s, that’s pretty good,”

Josh watched as Tyler covered his face with his hands and broke down into stronger sobs.

“We can talk about last night if you want, I, I’ve spent most of my day talking to Maggie and Dr West about it so I feel like I can explain my own perspective more if that’s what you want to hear, or if not then we can just agree to drop it for now, or forever - whatever, I don’t mind,”  
“I’m s-s-such a b-b-bad fr-frie-end!”  
“No, Ty, no, you’re really sick and in an unfamiliar environment, away from your family for the first time, being pushed and challenged in ways you never have been before, and that’s utterly terrifying. Sometimes when we’re scared, we lash out and say silly stuff we don’t mean, at least that’s what I do, but it’s okay because I forgive you. Truce?”  
“T-tr-truce,”

“Oh Tyler, honey, I know you’re scared but you can do this, I know you can,” Annie returned with Josh’s spoon.   
“You can do this. We’ll do this together, yeah?”

“How did it go?” Tyler was waiting for him at the door back onto the ward after his meeting with Dr West and his folks, and the pair of them started walking back to their bedrooms together.

“Good, yeah, really good. Got loads of praise for trying oral consumption voluntarily, Mom cried, and Becket High Security have offered me a bed for 6 weeks on the condition that I don’t pull out my NG at any point during my stay. They’re coming to collect me on Wednesday,”  
“Wednesday, o-okay, what time?”  
“They’re saying some time between 10 and 12, but they’re always late,”  
“So, uh, so you’ll be here for breakfast?”  
“I’ll be here for breakfast,”  
“Will you sit with me? For breakfast on Wednesday?” Tyler asked hesitantly.   
“Of course I will,” Josh smiled across at him fondly, then pointed at their doors when they arrived at them. “Mine or yours?”   
“Mine?” Tyler offered and he nodded, following the younger into his bedroom.

He’d cleaned up a lot after the mess produced by his manic hunt for the blade he’d lost, and now Josh was paying more attention to the personalised touches to the room. The bedding was brought from home and dark blue with little planets on it, and the top of his dresser was covered in cards filled with love and support from his extended family wishing him well. Tyler even had his own little dream catcher fixed above his headboard, and a teddy tucked up by the pillow.

“Has he got a name?” Josh picked up the bear as he climbed onto the bed, Tyler sitting up next to him.   
“Yeah, she’s called Honey,”  
“Did you have her as a kid?”  
“My grammy gave her to me when I had to drop out of school, so, uh, so she’s not that old,” he took the bear when Josh offered it across, playing with the stuffing in her arms.

“You gonna be okay here without me Ty?”  
“I, I, I have to be, don’t I? In 2 days you’ll be gone,”  
“It’ll only be a few weeks,”  
“Then you’ll move to adults,”  
“Yeah,” Josh sniffed. “I can pull my NG and get kicked out so they send me back here if you need me, just say the word,”  
“No, don’t be silly, you already said how helpful they are with your, uh, your hallucinations; don’t throw that away for me.”  
“I’m not throwing it away, I'm, I'm offering to trade it for working on eating with you. You know it had been weeks since I even tolerated any food at all in my mouth, then these past few days with you, I’ve eaten a couple of mouthfuls at almost every single meal and you’ve been doing amazing as well. We’re becoming a good team,”   
“We are, but still, you should go and do the psychosis programme at Becket.”

“Do you promise not to regress?”  
“You know I can’t promise that,” Tyler mumbled.   
“Promise to keep trying your best?”  
“I promise, but my best is so much better when you’re there with me.”  
“I’ll still be with you in spirit,”  
“It’s not the same,”

Tyler was starting to tear up and Josh felt guilty.

“We can still FaceTime every day though, right?”  
“No phones on Becket,”  
“No phones on Becket,” he whispered back, wiping the first tear hastily. “Well I’ll just have to stop self harming and start eating more so Dr West gives me a day leave pass and I can come up to visit you,”  
“I’d love that Ty, but, uh, but Westy is pretty stingy when it comes to giving people leave, especially if they’re here for the first wave 12 week programme,”

“He told me when I got admitted that if I’m good, like, like if I try really hard with my meals and I prove I can keep myself safe then he’d give me permission to leave the ward for up to 4 hours at a time - that would be long enough to get up to Becket, right?”  
“It would, yeah, but Westy’s version of good and yours are probably further apart than you think. He would want at least 72 hours of no self harm and probably 4 figures for your calorie intake before he even considers giving you 30 minutes leave. To get anywhere close to the upper limit you’re looking at way harsher requirements,”  
“I, I, I have to try,”

Tyler’s nostrils flared as he did his best to take deep slow breaths and fend off the sobs, but Josh could hear him creeping closer and closer to hysteria as he processed the situation.

“I know you’ll try your best Ty, I believe you, I see how badly you want to come and visit and I truly appreciate you for it, but I also know that you need to be gentle with yourself. If you’re expecting to be able to jump from where you are now to where you need to be for leave in such a short time period, then the pressure will crush you. Stay with the pace of the programme, work with Dr West and the team, keep trying to follow their guidance with the small but regular increments and by the end of the 12 weeks you’ll be in a really stable and secure place from which you can continue to improve. They know what they’re doing, and there’s a reason they’re not expecting you to be able to manage full meals so soon into recovery. Trust them, yeah?”

His slightly crooked top teeth bit into his cracked bottom lip in a last ditch attempt not to cry, but all it took was Josh’s reassuring smile for him to break down.

“Tyler, you’re going to be fine, you hear me? You will be fine. 6 weeks is gonna fly by, just you wait and see, one minute I’ll be gone and then the next I’m back - blink and you’ll miss it! Hey?” Josh didn’t know quite what to do but as Tyler curled in on himself, he couldn’t resist the urge to wrap an arm around his back. As soon as he initiated the connection, Tyler twisted and collapsed against Josh’s chest, spluttering and whimpering away.

“I know you’re scared but I know you, I know you Tyler and you’re more than capable of coping here without me.”  
“I-I’m s-sc-scared,”  
“What are you scared of?”  
“B-being on m-my o-own!”  
“You won’t be on your own bud, you’ve met everyone now and you know they’re all here to support you - you like Maggie and Westy, right?” Josh checked and Tyler nodded as he hiccuped. “And the other boys will more than happily let you to join their days flopped in front of the TV, plus your family will carry on visiting you like every single day, so you won’t be on your own, I promise,”

“Y-y-you’re the o-o-only one who u-unders-stands!”  
“Ty this is an eating disorder unit, everyone understands,”  
“N-no! N-Not l-like you!”

Josh didn’t know what to say or what to do. Secretly he felt the same way, he felt like he’d never really connected with someone so quickly as he had Tyler, and after so many years alone, it was strange to feel emotionally invested in another human being. The attachment initially felt like a rivalry, like he was seeing competition in Tyler, however he now realised that the competition had risen from the recognition of their similarities, and now he wanted to protect Tyler from continuing to make the same mistakes he had and save him from what could lie ahead.

He had the overwhelming urge in his chest to just bundle Tyler closer and defend him for anything or anyone who dared to even come close, but it was hard to protect him from something that came from his own brain.

“I’ll talk to Dr West, see if he’s willing to rescind his transfer application and let me stay at Oaktree,”  
“No!”  
“I want to stay,”  
“Y-you h-ha-have to g-go, they’ll, th-they’ll help with J-Jordan,”  
“They’ll give me enough drugs that I’m too sedated to notice if he comes, they don’t make him stop. I’ve been 5 times and nothing’s changed in the long run, why would admission 6 be any different? Whereas this, here, with you, this is something I’ve never done before, I’ve, I’ve never been as motivated and as eager to take forwards steps as I have been whilst sitting next to you, eating with you, these past few days. I, I feel like I’m making progress when I’m with you, which is something that I haven’t seen in years. Please Ty, let me talk to Dr West and see if he’ll let me stay?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we’re done! Would love to get some feedback on this please :D
> 
> I know some of my user subscribers were probably hoping for updates to my main fics but as some of you know, I’m in hospital and not having the greatest time, and smaller fics like this are a lot easier for me to wrap my brain around - hope that’s okay. 
> 
> Let me know if you want more from this Oaktree AU, or any other prompts for oneshots and maybe I’ll have a go at any that grab me
> 
> Thanks for reading  
Maisie


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